How Small Can I Make a Transition?

yonargi1

I'm having problems with several things:

1. I would like to have one slide (or sequence) appear in 3D. Is there any way to do this in VP?

2. I would like to make a transition thus:

a. Magic Eye as a base.

b. Then I want to overlay a video of a hummingbird on it.

c. Obviously, the background will have to come off the overlay and leave just the little fluttering hummingbird.

d. I want this to serve as a very brief transition. I have managed to make this slide (except for the transparent video background), but it must be too small, because I have created and saved it twice but I cannot find it on my computer.

How do I do this?

I am using v. 4.40.

c_major_2

Sorry, not quite understand what you wanted to do here.

In VideoPad the minimum transition duration is 0.002 seconds. However on export, it can be easily dropped if it falls between two output frames. So it would make sense to at lease have a few frames in order to appear in the output.

[deleted]

"1. I would like to have one slide (or sequence) appear in 3D. Is there any way to do this in VP?"

Are you refering here to an autosterogram image..(Magic Eye image)?

Nat

yonargi1

Yes.

[deleted]

There should be no problem with that as it's a single image. It just needs to be displayed long enough for the 3d effect to be percieved by the viewers. Perhaps something like 15 - 30 seconds. The trick, of course is the time taken to accomodate the eyes and this can vary from person to person and be from no time at all to "Cant do it" :-)

For your hummingbird (although you have got one) try an animatred gif from here...

http://images.google...ctHAloQ9QEILDAC

Load the Magic Eye image to the timeline and then drag the animation into VP and place it onto the overlay track. Now you need to remove the background colour using the Green Screen effect. Click the FX button at the start of the clip and select Green Screen

With this particular animation the hues are generally blue so click the blue slider and move over to the preview. You will now a dropper cursor. Click this on the background colour (which is a single shade) and that colour will disappear from the preview leaving the hummingbird but minus the beak as this is not exactly the shade. So lower the value of the blue slider to 200 and lo and behold...just the hummingbird on your auto stereogram. The values for this particular animation are:

Red 211

Green 223

Blue 200

Threshold 9

Fading 0

Based on Auto

Presuming you want the overlay to show for a brief second between clips, all you now need to do is to split it into segments of a suitable duration and move each one along the overlay track so it sits over a join. Add Fade in and fade out if required.

You need to remember that this is an animation and if you make each one too short there may not be much animation visible.

Here is an example of what VP might look like....

The autostereogram in this case is the "Tower of Babel" although this example image shows it somewhat covered up. Hope this helps answer your query though. By pure coincidence I am giving a talk tomorrow night on 3d and anaglyph creation...... Weird or what!

Nat

yonargi1

Your instructions are so complete. Thank you for that. I still have one problem though. Is there a trick to downloading an animated .gif? Mine downloaded okay, I went into my "Paint" and changed the color on the hummingbird. Now it looks beautiful but it is not animating where I have placed it in an overlay in VP. What am I doing wrong?

[deleted]

"Is there a trick to downloading an animated .gif?"

Not normally. It should download just like any file. Just right click it and select "Save image as" That generally works.

However, is it an ANIMATED gif that you have or just the first image? The fact that you say you loaded it into Paint and changed the colour of the hummingbird suggests that you have only a single .gif image. (Paint doesn't deal with multiple images.) Animated .gif s usuually have many images. Loading it into Paint will only load the first frame.

So ...Does the .gif you downloaded play...say, directly in your browser or when loaded into VP in its raw state? If it does you have indeed loaded an animated file OK and you can proceed from there.

If you are going to change particular colours in this then you must extract all the component images using a gif frame extracting program. (Do a Google search) If you haven't already got it download and use Irfanview

http://www.irfanview...wnload_engl.htm

and use that. (Free and very effective with a host of other features)

With all the images extracted you can deal with each one.

Once finished you recreate the animation using something like Microsoft .gif animator.

Quite a bit of work as you can see.

One thing to note is that using many colours in your animation (or even a single image or video) means that the "Green Screen" effect may not work correctly. Its best to have a single background colour that you can match to (i.e. a green screen - although it doesn't have to be green) and which is not actually in the part of the image you wish to retain. If the identical shade is present then that, too will become transparent along with the background.

Did you try the hummingbird in my link?

Nat

borate

Related info of possible interest.

yonargi1

I am still struggling with this problem.

I found another animated gif which does not need color change, here: http://giphy.com/gifs/10qLozL9hkt5VC

How do I:

a) Download the gif in order that all the gif comes down, and

Remove the background?

The rest I know how to do.

[deleted]

Open the link you posted: http://giphy.com/gifs/10qLozL9hkt5VC

This will show your animated .gif of the hummingbird drinking nectar.

Right click the image

Select "Save image as" from the list of options

Select a folder (e.g. Desktop)

Leave the name field as giphy.gif

Click Save

The animated file will be saved to your desktop

Double click the file to make it run or load it into VP where it will play.

Removing the background may be even more difficult with this animation as there are several different shades present. Remember that the "Green Screen" effect can only deal with one shade.(The one you pick with the dropper and vary with threshold etc.) Unfortunately some of the background shades are also present in the body of the bird which would end up showing holes. The darker grey area running across behind the bird will be almost impossible to remove for the same reason.

The original gif file I suggested had a monochrome background which was easier to deal with.

If you want a lot of work... :-) you could extract each .gif image in the animation (123 of them!); mask the bird outline, invert the mask and then flood it with a pure shade (e.g. GREEN) and then resave the image. Do this 123 times..(the mask will be different on each image,) and use a .gif animator to re create the animation. That's a fair bit of work...... :-0

Here is just one of the frames treated in this way........

ORIGINAL: GREEN SCREEN

Nat

yonargi1

Thank you. I have just returned from a week away from the project. I will begin experimenting now.

biljim

Hello - I'm inserting transitions and am finding that some of them (independent of the particular transition selected) are limited to a 0.002 duration. I can find no reason why this is happening. Any suggestions please?

borate

biljim wrote:

Hello - I'm inserting transitions and am finding that some of them (independent of the particular transition selected) are limited to a 0.002 duration. I can find no reason why this is happening. Any suggestions please?

Note response #2 in this thread, from c_major, who works for NCH. Why would such a short transition be needed?

[deleted]

biljim wrote:

Hello - I'm inserting transitions and am finding that some of them (independent of the particular transition selected) are limited to a 0.002 duration. I can find no reason why this is happening. Any suggestions please?

To clarify: are the transitions having a minimum length of 0.002 seconds, or is 0.002 seconds the maximum it will let expand the transition to?

If it's the maximum, you probably have a very tiny 0.001 second clip between the two clips. You can either zoom all the way in at the bit between the two clips to find it, or (if it's on Video Track 1), change to storyboard view to find it. Deleting that tiny clip should fix the problem, and transitions can expand up to the entire duration of the clips on either side of it (the length of the smaller clip, anyway).

biljim

Thanks - sorted - Feliz Navidad